by Al Ewing
CHAPTER SIX
The Body Lovers
I wake up to the squeaking of wheels, like a supermarket trolley. Then the feeling of movement, the bump-bump-bump of a metal cart with no suspension being wheeled over rough slabs of centuries-old stone, bump, bump, bump. Electric light passing overhead like UFOs. The smell of cobwebs. Metal bands strapped over wrists, ankles, waist, throat, and a pair of heavy pads on each side of my head, keeping it in place.
I'm on the move.
They've got me chained down to some sort of gurney, wheeling me through the old stone corridors to the next destination. I don't think this is part of a prisoner release program - whatever the Boxer was yammering about while he was taking me to pieces, it didn't sound like the kind of thing they'd change their minds about. Which means that whatever they're wheeling me towards, it's worse than a torture that feels like a billion years of indescribable agony.
But hey, no sense panicking.
Bump, bump, bump.
I flex, trying to break the bonds, but no go. Whatever they're made out of, it's stronger than I am. These people know everything about me - my powers, my limits, how to break me, how to fix me. And that worries me a lot, and not just because they're wheeling me to Room 101 for a taste of who-knows-what.
It worries me because they think I'm going to end the world.
What did the Boxer say? Something about times and plans. Something about a guy named Emmett Roscoe.
Much as I hate to say it, that name is starting to seem familiar.
Bump, bump, bump.
Wheels hitting stone slabs with the rhythm of a nightclub somewhere. Emmett Roscoe...
Nothing. It's gone. And I've got more important things to worry about.
Such as what they're going to do to me now. It occurs to me that if they have done their worst and not found out what they were looking for - and God knows I don't know what the hell they're looking for - this might be it. The big finish. Cement overshoes. A swim with the fishes.
Thrown to the wolves.
This might not be a hospital gurney. It might be a dessert cart.
But hey - no sense panicking.
Bump, bump, bump.
Whoever's pushing this thing knows I'm awake now, but he's not saying a word. A good soldier. Or maybe he's seen a lot of these before. Maybe he's pushed so many struggling bodies to the wolf pen that I'm just meat to him. He's thinking about dinner tonight, or whether he remembered to set his TiVo to record that documentary on The World's Most Dangerous Shoplifters starring Sheriff John Bunnell, or maybe looking forward to the match on Saturday. Chelsea versus Everton, should be a good one... Face it. He doesn't give a damn.
Or she. We live in enlightened times.
Bump, bump, bump.
Crash.
The gurney slams through a set of steel doors, and we're there. I can't turn my head or crane my neck, so I have no idea what's going on, but I'm not hearing anything but footsteps. No snarls, no growls, no howls. So I can breathe easy on that score. On the other hand, those footsteps are padding around the room. He's doing something. Scrape of metal on stone... something being set up, checked.
I really wish I could turn my head.
I get a glimpse of whoever-it-is as he steps back this way - not a face I've seen before, just a technician, and by the look of it he doesn't particularly care who I am either. He just grabs hold of the gurney and pushes it towards whatever he's been tinkering with. Some sort of copper piping...
Huh.
I'm staring up at a tap.
That's new.
I've got to admit, I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop here. A while ago, I was screaming in agony as a high-tech science-fiction capacitor remoulded my cells like Play-Doh, and now they've decided to upgrade to plumbing. What are they going to do, wash me to death?
He's setting it all up very carefully. Marking position exactly. Something's up here.
And then he turns the handle.
There's some kind of washer in place in the tap, because water doesn't come out immediately. It trickles out, just a drop at a time. Hitting right in the centre of my forehead. Drip. Drip. Drip. Annoying. What are they trying to do here? Annoy me into submission?
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Oh, wait.
Drip.
I know what this is.
Drip.
I saw this in The Avengers once.
Drip.
This is that water torture - the one where they hold the victim under it until they go mad. It was on telly.
Drip.
Actually this is pretty annoying.
Drip.
Make that really annoying. I can't move. I can't move and it just keeps dripping away.
Drip.
Turn it off.
Drip.
I can't move. I want to scratch my nose. Rub my forehead. Massage my temples. I want to scratch that itch in the small of my back.
Drip.
Suddenly I've forgotten how bad the torture earlier was. This is torture - right here.
Drip.
This is the worst torture in the world. I can't move a muscle and this water is just dripping on me, drip-drip-drip. And I can feel what it's doing. I can feel myself starting to go crazy. This is actually going to work. It worked on the telly. Why am I surprised that they'd use it in real life?
Drip.
It always works on the telly. They're going to drive me mad with this.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Dr—
Fuck it.
I grab time hard and squeeze it like I'm gripping the balls of some tosser in a bar room brawl. The water-drop slows, then stops, hanging in the air.
Right.
We've established that this is going to work. Maybe it's psychosomatic, but it's going to work. Just like on the telly. So. How do I get out of this one?
The straps are made of something I can't break. So that's out. I'm stuck here for as long as they leave me, and they're probably going to leave me here a while.
I keep time held in my mind. The droplet hangs in space above my head, unmoving - like a sputnik floating in space.
I can't stay like this. In subjective time, it could take years for them to come back to me. I'll have gone crazy with boredom by then.
So. I can't break out, and I can't keep holding onto time forever. What other options are there?
Think.
The ball of water drifts downwards. I relax, letting it tumble through the air, then clench time tight in my grip again, bringing it to a halt. Relax... and grip. The ball inching downwards in little jerks until it splashes against my wet forehead. Above, another grows from the tap, ready to take its place.
I can't reverse those droplets, but I can control how fast they fall.
So.
Let's try something I've never tried before.
Let's turn time up to eleven.
I let go. Time washes over me like a cold shower... and then I grab hold again, and twist... and time keeps moving... falling... thundering down...
Faster.
And faster.
The drips become a trickle, the trickle a flood, a constant pressure that settles on my face. I can handle this for ten minutes or so before I have to slow time down again. And for me it's only going to be ten minutes.
I start hearing sounds - little blips and clicks. For a moment I see a pink and white blur in the air above me - a doctor? A technician? Feel a trace of something cold against my chest, probably a stethoscope, some kind of instrument... how long would it take them to check me? An hour? Eight hours? A day?
There it goes again.
Grab time. Twist.
Faster. Faster.
How fast am I going? Eight hours for every second? A day? Two?
I'm thinking how I probably look from the outside. I'm doing the best I can not to twitch or move too much, just holding still with what seems like a wet gel pack resting on my forehead. I'm probably frozen s
olid, eyes open, expression unchanging... looking like a real dead body, in other words.
I'm hoping that's the effect they're after.
Faster and faster.
More blurs. So fast now - there's a constant pink and white mist in the air. How many days have gone by now? How many weeks? How many weeks are passing even while I think that? I'm getting more blips and clicks in the air, like a forest of crickets. Talking to each other, firing off questions. Maybe questioning me. Lights are flashing in my eyes. Interrogation. All the activity is building to some kind of—
Jesus!
It takes everything I can not to jerk. It felt like someone slashed open my leg and poured battery acid in it - I actually slowed down for a moment and caught a glimpse of a room full of freaks in lab coats, the Boxer standing around looking grim... that was the capacitor. The pulse generator they were using on me before.
I must be going too fast for it.
I wait, tensed, for another, but nothing. They must have held it on me for a while, hoping for some kind of reaction.
It occurs to me that, for the first time, I am acting like a real corpse.
I am normal.
I am just like you.
When you're dead, that is.
More buzzing, flashing, bleeping and clicking. What's it been? One minute? Two? I'm probably in trouble here. I need to slow things back to normal as soon as they take me out of this room, because otherwise - if I look like an ordinary corpse - what's stopping them from feeding me to the -
Wait, what -
Everything's changed -
Hands inside me -
Let go -
- and time slows and groans back into place like a bullet train pulling into the station. Everything went wild there for a moment, blurred, racing past me. They took me somewhere else. It'd barely registered before I felt something - in me.
Hands. Blades. Like having a food processor grinding into me.
I feel... empty. Literally.
And there's an old, balding man with little round glasses standing above me with a scalpel, dictating into some sort of microphone.
I'm being dissected.
"Holy shit!"
I suppose I should have stayed quiet. Well, you try staying quiet when someone cuts you open and takes out your internal organs. Go on, I'll wait.
Dr Glasses stumbles back, opening his mouth to scream. Without thinking, I grip time, slow it, and then reach up and grab him by the throat, crushing his windpipe in my hand and then snapping his neck. I smash the microphone for good measure. No sense taking chances.
I let go - time wrapping around me like a cheap overcoat - and he staggers back, eyes bulging, head lolling obscenely, trying to sputter something, his tongue protruding through his lips. Then he tumbles down like a sack of potatoes.
It's not until he falls that I realise I'm not tied down any longer.
Why didn't I notice that?
And there's nobody else in the room. No guards, no cameras. No sign of any surveillance at all.
How long would it take them to decide I was no longer a threat?
Maybe I'm not a threat. I feel thin. Washed out. Light-headed. Maybe it's from time running without me for so long.
Maybe it's because half of me's been carefully removed by Dr Glasses.
How long was I lying in that room?
There are pages and pages of typewritten notes here - file cabinets on the walls, drawers dated September through to October. That split-second flurry of activity took nearly two months. I'm lucky they didn't decide to feed me to those monsters - if they had, I'd never even know it'd happened. Just lights out.
I'm not sure I want to think about how long I've been under here. Long enough for them to stop seeing me as dangerous. And I don't think the Boxer was going to stop thinking that any time soon. Maybe he's dead.
Maybe he died of old age.
I swing myself up off the table for a closer look at the notes.
First incision: September 5, 2010.
Three years.
They kept me on that table for three years. Kept the water running for three years. Monitored reactions for three years. And then they figured I was just another body and schlepped me over here to cut me open and chop me up.
I don't know if you've ever been in that situation, but it's pretty strange, let me tell you. It disconnects you. I feel like I've been taken out of reality and put down somewhere else, somewhere without any rules.
2010.
Jesus Christ, I'm in the future.
I wonder if we've got flying cars yet?
The words on the page are typed neatly, laid out perfectly, but I can't read them. They're swimming in front of my eyes and all the di-oxy-rybo-nucleics and gestalt units and seratonin detection sitting on the page pretending to mean something just won't connect together into anything that makes sense. They float around, chopping and changing. Somewhere in here, there's a key to all the mysteries, but I can't find it. I read New Scientist - I'm not stupid. But this is something else.
I've woken up in the future. What the hell did I expect?
And then there's the sound of glass clinking against glass, and I stop caring what year it is. The paper tumbles to the floor.
Chink.
I'm suddenly very aware of the gaping, yawning emptiness under my ribcage, the tent-flap of skin and muscle yawning open. I was wondering where all of that went. Now I know.
Big glass jars line the back of the room, stretching away from me on a single, long shelf. Each of them is marked and filled with something soft, wet and red.
One of my organs.
Clink.
One of my kidneys is looking back at me. Literally. There's an eye in the middle of the purplish-brown mass. It closes, then opens, like a sick parody of a come-on.
Next to it, I can see a lung, pulsing slowly in and out, breathing on its own. Embedded in the surface is a single, pulsing vein.
The further away from me the organs are, the weirder it gets.
Chink. Chink.
My stomach, lying at the bottom of a jar with a set of vestigial fingers poking from the lining. The fingers wiggling and twitching.
A length of intestine, reared up and swaying like a cobra. Like a centipede.
At the back of the room, my heart. There are... legs growing out of it. Like spider's legs. Little hairs poking out of red flesh. My heart, scrabbling as it pumps, scuttling behind the glass, a pair of mandibles extended from the left ventricle, snapping and clacking.
My heart is an insect.
With every thrash of its legs, the jar rattles against its neighbour, my pancreas pushing back against the wall of the jar like a slug.
Chink. Chink. Clink.
My heart is at war with my pancreas.
Chink. Clink.
Mandibles clash against glass. The jar is rocking now.
I take a step towards it, and it turns.
It's looking at me.
Another step.
I can feel it now. The spider-heart. I can feel it in my mind, and it's so... alien.
An insect intelligence communicating with mine.
What is it?
What am I?
What sort of person was I?
Another step. It calms, slowly stopping movement. The intelligence... recedes.
No, that's wrong.
It merges. Blends.
Fits in.
The jar stops moving.
I take another step.
Another. I'm close enough to reach out and take the jar in my hands, turn it around slowly, eyes looking over what's inside.
Just a lump of meat.
A human heart, sitting in a jar. No legs, no jaws... nothing that couldn't have come out of a human being.
I look at the other jars.
Nothing.
Just organs.
I think I'm going to be sick, but there's nothing to be sick with. I've got nothing down there. Then I want to laugh, but I've got nothing to laugh wi
th either. Then I want to be sick again.
I crack the lid of the jar, reaching in and grabbing my heart. Inert muscle.
I shake it a little.
Probe it with my mind.
Nothing.
I'm trying to remember how things were ten minutes ago. Ten minutes ago when my biggest problem was water dripping on my forehead.
Three years ago.
Without thinking, I raise the still heart to my lips. Teeth bite into the muscle, tearing off a strip, swallowing. Then bite again.
I'm in shock.
I'm barely aware I'm doing this.
Bite by bite, like tearing into a rich, red pepper. A meaty, juicy heart.
I finish it and pop open the next jar, reaching in and gripping a pancreas that slid up the side of the jar like a slug. And I bite. And bite. And bite.
There's nothing below my ribcage, but I can feel myself getting stronger. Full of all the good things a body needs.
I bite into a lung, chewing and swallowing. Letting myself go. Letting myself drift away for a while.
Letting myself heal.
The worst part isn't the taste. It isn't the meat and formaldehyde on my tongue, or the heavy feel of the raw meat as it slides down my throat.
It's that it feels so natural.
So terribly, wonderfully natural.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Cat Among The Pigeons
Three years is a long time in politics, but the Boxer had not retired.
He could not retire, as long as the thing on the dissection slab remained. It anchored him to the job, to the life, an inert lump of matter that kept him getting up in the morning and taking the bus to the Tower. Once upon a time, Albert Morse had felt angry at the situation, filing endless petitions with Mister Smith to have the thing on the slab destroyed - he knew better now. It was inert. It hadn't moved or even twitched in months - years, even. John Doe was a broken doll, a puppet without any strings, and the murderous drive that had once possessed Albert Morse had mellowed a little every day that he hadn't moved, spoken or thought, the icy resolve thawing into simple habit.
After a year, he'd relaxed enough to get another dog, a one-eyed hound from an animal rescue organisation, and while walking the beast on the common he'd met Shirley, who worked with traumatised children in a clinic in Battersea. They'd married at the end of 2009 and were in the process of adopting.